The Portent Blog: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemonhttps://www.portent.com
Helping you see the forest for the trees in internet marketing: Pulling together search, design, content, social, and more with a cogent strategy.
Sat, 25 May 2019 00:10:03 +0000 en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.1http://www.portent.com/bloghttps://www.portent.com/images/portent-logo_mark_and_text-dark_blue-safe_area.pngPortent, Inc Logohttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/conversationmarketing/MRJIhttps://feedburner.google.com8 Rules For Lead Gen Forms: A Ranthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/J4I6wqXSNtU/lead-gen-forms-a-rant.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/design-dev/user-experience/lead-gen-forms-a-rant.htm#commentsFri, 24 May 2019 15:01:07 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=48182TL;DR: Don’t use lead gen forms to abuse potential customers. Don’t sacrifice reach for low-quality leads. And a few other tidbits. An intriguing ebook title zipped by in my Twitter feed today. The landing page described the wondrous information in this piece of content. All I had to do was provide a little info: This […]

1: Lead Gen Forms Are Not Surveys

The nutjob form above, for example, asked me “What is my biggest challenge?”

My biggest challenge is getting used to progressive lenses and answering inane questions when I’m trying to download your ebook.

MY POINT being that the rules below do not apply to surveys.

2: Most Leads Don’t Like You (Yet)

They didn’t want to fill out that form. They had to. They don’t want to hear from you. They’ve set up separate spam collection email accounts to trap and ignore your follow-ups. Most site visitors just want whatever’s on the other side of that form.

Best case, you can change them from detractors to fans. To do it, the content you provide had better induce a state of trembling euphoria.

Or, you can make it easier for a visitor to get your content.

Require less. Deliver more.

3. More Fields Mean Fewer Leads

Every field you add to a form cuts the number of leads by 25%.

That’s my pseudo-datapoint for this post. It’s based purely on instinct and anecdotal evidence. Please don’t start throwing it around in meetings.

Marketing and sales teams will say, “Yeah, but those leads are better qualified.”

Nope. Incorrect. False. Faulty. Untrue. Erroneous.

On to #4.

4. Extraction Does Not Equal Qualification

“Qualified” means “likely to buy.” It does not mean “survived excruciating data extraction.”

That tedious form just set my teeth on edge. I’m not more qualified; I’m uncomfortable. I feel like a sucker.

How many qualified leads did you lose because they wouldn’t fill out that ridiculous form? Lots.

Also, see #2. See #5.

5. Don’t Sacrifice Reach For Lousy Leads

Detailed lead gen forms sound great, but you’re trading reach for leads. Be mindful of that. Every person who sees your content and likes it is a potential customer, but they’re more than that—they’re a prospective salesperson. They may pass your ebook or whatever along.

They might talk about it. Or tweet it.

They’re more likely to do that than reply to your inevitable follow-up email.

Note: I am not frolicking in the happy fields of brand building. Lead gen forms are a great way to capture leads, but they’re not the only way. Every reader is a potential lead. Want leads? Get more readers.

6. Open-Ended Questions Suck

The “contact us” form on Portent’s site has an optional, qualitative question: “How can we help?”

I just checked the data. In the last thirty-six hours, thirty-five people have completed the form.

Five of them used the “How can we help?” field.

Four of them asked if they could write a guest post on our blog.

One talked about biological acts using language I wouldn’t repeat on the subway.

Open-ended questions are lousy lead gen tools. If you must have one, make it optional.

7. Enrich, Don’t Demand

Be patient. Instead of demanding a ton of information up front, enrich it over time.

Start by giving me something useful in exchange for my name and email address. Now I like and trust you.

Next time, ask me for a little more: My company and my title, for example. In exchange, give me something even better.

Then offer me personal contact for even more information. Provide a free consultation in exchange for my phone number, the size of my team and my budget. Provide access to a private Slack channel, or a subscription to an exclusive newsletter.

Please make me a fan, not a lead. I’ll love you for it.

8. Other Rules

Keep these in mind:

If you check the “Please send me information” box by default, you deserve a special place in Hell. Belay that. You deserve a whole separate hell. Just for you.

For every breathlessly, ridiculously obvious statement you make in your content, remove one field from your form. If you say “Today, in [industry][thing] matters more than ever,” ungate your content and back away slowly. Please don’t take this personally. I’m as guilty as you are.

If I hit [TAB], I’d better advance to the next field.

That’s It

I tried to come up with a pithy conclusion. I finally developed one using ten years’ data across 3,000 customers. If you want to hear more, please fill out this form…

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/design-dev/user-experience/lead-gen-forms-a-rant.htm/feed2https://www.portent.com/blog/design-dev/user-experience/lead-gen-forms-a-rant.htmBuilt to a T: The Foundation of the Modern Marketing Agencyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/RxgzsIxYkoc/built-to-a-t-the-foundation-of-the-modern-marketing-agency.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/built-to-a-t-the-foundation-of-the-modern-marketing-agency.htm#respondThu, 23 May 2019 16:00:59 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=48143In the world of digital marketing, there is a growing demand for people who can do it all. Or, at least understand it all. More and more businesses, from start-ups to well-established brands, are clamoring for marketers who can effectively run or guide an entire marketing program from beginning to end. In response to this […]

In the world of digital marketing, there is a growing demand for people who can do it all. Or, at least understand it all.

More and more businesses, from start-ups to well-established brands, are clamoring for marketers who can effectively run or guide an entire marketing program from beginning to end.

In response to this demand, many marketing professionals are striving to become full-stack marketers, believing it’s the leanest way to create value as a professional in our field.

While broad experience is necessary in today’s space, marketers must have a substantial depth of knowledge in at least one marketing channel or element as well.

As we develop our marketing team at Portent, we focus on building T-shaped marketers. Although not a new concept to employee development or marketing, the foundation of it remains tried and true.

The T-Shaped Marketer

Successful marketers need a strong understanding of the different elements and channels of digital marketing. But to generate exceptional marketing results, great marketers need to have in-depth expertise in at least one area or skill set as well.

We approach this concept with an agency model in mind because well, we’re a digital marketing agency. Regardless of the space you find yourself in, whether that be a marketing leader in the agency world, in-house for a brand, or as an independent freelancer, this concept scales across the digital marketing landscape.

Originally coined in the early 1990s by David Guest and later popularized by Tim Brown, T-shaped marketing means mastering the basics and then diving deep to become an expert in a specific area. The horizontal bar of the T represents the width or breadth of knowledge and the vertical bar indicates the depth.

There are many different versions of what this could look like, but for an example, here’s what an SEO practitioner’s skill set looks like at Portent:

An idealized representation of a T shape can be a bit intimidating.

“Marketing” covers a wide swath of focus areas, and these Ts seem to imply that a marketer must possess a nearly superhuman command of an incredible set of skills.

Becoming a T-shaped marketer does not mean you are expected to know it all. The depth of knowledge you possess in a few areas will supplement the breadth of knowledge rounded out by an individual’s skill set.

What’s important when developing T-shaped marketers is that they understand the foundations of digital marketing and, just as importantly, understand how they leverage each other.

Just as there’s no magical formula for a perfect digital marketing strategy, there is no one-size-fits-all model of a “perfect T.” Instead, envision a flexible model where the shape of the T is unique to each individual. What’s unwavering in that flexibility, however, is a deep technical understanding in at least one marketing channel or element.

Building T-Shaped Marketing Teams

When building a marketing team for your brand or the next client you engage with, think about the entire spectrum of marketing you need to support. A successful T-shaped team should include people who are really good at a few key areas, have a solid understanding of the digital marketing landscape, and have a thirst for learning and sharing what they know.

At Portent, we achieve this by prioritizing the hiring of T-shaped marketers around the services we offer to our clients—each with their own passions and specializations.

When we do this, we get a collaborative, cross-functional team that can see the whole picture and support each other’s strengths and weaknesses. These cross function teams understand how their work leverages each other.

Hiring for the Soft Skills

Approaching the T shape is a great way to identify tangible industry experience, but there is more to becoming a great marketer than mastering the technical skills—especially when you’re putting together a full-stack marketing team.

In 2015, Irving Wladawsky-Berger wrote an article that discussed what he called The Rise of the T-Shaped Organization. He argued that today’s businesses must place a higher value on soft skills and look for people with adaptability, cultural competence, 360-degree thinking, intellectual curiosity, and empathy.

In the agency space we live in, hiring for soft skills is just as—if not more—important than finding people with great technical skills. At Portent, we look for six attributes when hiring, that are at the core of our philosophy. SHIFTS is everything to us—it’s how we approach our work every day and it’s how we test ourselves against everything we do.

We don’t expect people to know everything from the start, but we don’t compromise on our core values. We do look for people with personality traits that align with our goal of developing T-shaped marketers. Doing that allows us to find the right people to build our team around.

We look for marketers who are strong communicators.

We look for marketers with high emotional intelligence.

We look for marketers who are genuinely curious about their craft.

We look for marketers who are fearlessly accountable for their work.

We look for marketers who love to teach what they do.

And we look for marketers who want to give back—to our agency, the digital industry, and the communities around them.

Yes, the digital marketing world is always changing. But being on the cutting edge of the latest trend or technology doesn’t mean forgetting “old school” principles of open dialogue, teamwork, and problem-based learning.

Building successful marketers and marketing team starts with bringing together people who are passionate about what they do, show compassion and empathy for others, and possess a desire to share and learn. Industry knowledge is essential, but so are the soft skills to bring it all together.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/built-to-a-t-the-foundation-of-the-modern-marketing-agency.htm/feed0https://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/built-to-a-t-the-foundation-of-the-modern-marketing-agency.htmHow Long Should Your Blog Post Be for SEO?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/FjVzMk69JsE/how-long-should-your-blog-post-be-for-seo.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/how-long-should-your-blog-post-be-for-seo.htm#respondTue, 21 May 2019 14:00:25 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=48102300 words? 800? 1,600? What is the SEO “sweet spot” to make sure your blog post ranks high in search results? Questioning the relationship between the length of a blog post and search result ranking implies that Google sets a minimum word count for blogs. Yet, no such standard actually exists. I get it—the idea […]

300 words? 800? 1,600? What is the SEO “sweet spot” to make sure your blog post ranks high in search results? Questioning the relationship between the length of a blog post and search result ranking implies that Google sets a minimum word count for blogs. Yet, no such standard actually exists.

I get it—the idea of a magic number for content length is incredibly appealing. To tempt this notion further, logically, the more words there are the more opportunities there will be to rank for keywords. But at what point does your content become a page full of keywords and content fillers in an attempt to satisfy search engines instead of fulfilling user needs?

The need to assign an optimal standard content length reflects the amount of effort people are willing to put into their SEO practices. In an attempt to stop you from drinking the Kool-Aid (i.e., to resist low-quality cookie-cutter SEO), this article will teach you how to determine the best content length based on search intent, how to create quality content, and how to monitor your content’s performance.

Let Search Intent Be Your Guide

Most SEO experts have opinions on what constitutes the optimal content length. Some will tell you that “300–500 words are best,” or “2,000 words should be the minimum for a blog,” or claim that they’ve found the “sweet spot” at 1,890 words.

However, knowing how long your content should be depends strongly on what is typical for the industry you are writing for, and what fulfills the intent of the search query.

Does the intent behind a keyword require long-form content to answer? If so, write long-form content. But, maybe, the intent is better answered in less text and more images. If that’s the case, then optimizing your images for SEO and reducing the number of words on your page is the best answer.

An effective way to determine the searcher’s intent in googling a keyword may be quite different from how Google interprets it. Perform a SERP (search engine results page) analysis and see if Google finds the blog content valuable for your target keywords. If Google does value the blog content, what does that content look like?

Performing a SERP analysis can teach you a lot about what kind of content succeeds in the search results for a given keyword. Here is an example of a SERP analysis measuring the content length of the top five results for one of my target keywords:

Of course, some pages included a comment section and videos, and have higher authority and credibility, so there is more to look at than the content length word count. However, this should give you a comprehensive idea of what length of content the target audience prefers and what you’re going up against to rank on the first page. For the keyword example used in my SERP analysis “when to use Oxford comma,” I can tell that people want the content to be direct and to the point without all the fluff. When I looked at the second page of Google (as we all know, nobody else does), I found articles with content over 1,200 words.

Create Content With Substance

Blog posts that perform well and rank well are the ones with high-value content. So, do the blog posts that are exactly 1,890 words long motivate people to make a purchase? Probably not. That is why you need to be innovative and consistent in creating high-quality content. When you create unique and valuable content you have the opportunity to build rapport, authority, trust, and brand awareness every time a searcher lands on your page.

In other words, if you can write your blog post and fulfill your reader’s intent in 300 words, then maybe you should. If it requires 3,000 words to make the reader feel the blog post was of value, then that’s perfectly fine, too.

The writing style you choose will influence your content’s length as well. Some blog topics and writing styles tend to be short, concise, and to the point. Others aim to be more conversational and interactive, which often lend to longer content.

Measuring Content Performance

It is important as you are writing blog content that you monitor your blog’s content performance. Some marketers are comfortable measuring the success of their blog with keyword rankings and organic traffic. In reality, your blog analytics give you access to pools of data beyond that. By getting information on whether your content is performing well, you can make the necessary adjustments to bring value to your users and maintain your rankings in the search results.

Don’t Believe the Word Count Myth

There is no perfect blog post length for SEO. It all comes down to the searcher’s intent and how detailed they expect the answer to be. It just so happens that long blog posts tend to answer the searcher’s question comprehensively. But it is not the length of the blog post that leads to higher rankings; it’s the fact that the blog post satisfies the question being asked. It is not uncommon to find top ranking pages for valuable keywords that are no more than 500 words in length, as my example above displayed.

Remember, the advice given here consists of guidelines, not requirements. The best thing you can do for your blog is to fill it with unique and valuable content and get rid of everything you don’t need.

It doesn’t matter if your blog post is 300, 1,500, or 2,000 words, or 100 words more than the top ranking page. By creating valuable content consistently for your audience, over time, you will help Google identify your website as an expert, and a trustworthy source on a topic/industry, and in return will rank higher for competitive keywords.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/how-long-should-your-blog-post-be-for-seo.htm/feed0https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/how-long-should-your-blog-post-be-for-seo.htmMaximize Your Facebook Ads ROI with Automatic Placementshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/zzpFmBOnK88/maximize-your-facebook-ads-roi-with-automatic-placements.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/social-media/maximize-your-facebook-ads-roi-with-automatic-placements.htm#respondThu, 16 May 2019 14:00:33 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=48019Facebook gives advertisers many possibilities to optimize and improve performance. It can be overwhelming at times, once you start thinking about the myriad of factors like campaign objective, targeting, ad delivery, ad unit type, ad copy, and budget—to name a few. There are a lot of considerations when advertising on Facebook, which is why advertisers […]

Facebook gives advertisers many possibilities to optimize and improve performance. It can be overwhelming at times, once you start thinking about the myriad of factors like campaign objective, targeting, ad delivery, ad unit type, ad copy, and budget—to name a few. There are a lot of considerations when advertising on Facebook, which is why advertisers are always looking for ways to improve performance and efficiency for their campaigns.

Facebook has slowly made adjustments to its ad platform to help advertisers improve their results much faster. The development that stands out the most is maximizing “placement” performance with automatic placements.

Facebook has established automatic placements in an effort to help advertisers get the best results available across all default placements. This allows Facebook to choose results from the broadest range possible, which implies that automatic placements are typically the most efficient use of the advertiser’s budget because they help control costs.

Do Advertisers Need to use Facebook Automatic Placements to Improve ROI?

The short answer, yes.

In past years it was wise to break out your ad sets individually for each placement, to have more control and easily decrease or increase ad spend based on results. However, Facebook’s ad technology has gotten to the point where it will likely negatively impact performance in most cases if you use the same tactic and not have all placements enabled in one ad set.

Let’s explore why.

Facebook always has the advertiser’s best interest in mind when it comes to delivering results. The automatic placement option will optimize your ads in real-time to get your ad unit in front of users who are more likely to take action based on the campaign objective.

Facebook had shared in the past a fantastic explanation and visual of how automatic placements work and why it’s so powerful. It’s easy to digest and understand, no matter your advertising skill level.

www.facebook.com

Facebook’s example graphic above presents 11 opportunities to show an ad: three on Facebook, three on Instagram, and five on Audience Network. For reference, in the past, those three placements would have been broken into three separate ad sets.

The red circle around any of these icons (placements) means the ad was shown in that placement and got the optimization event.

When selecting all three placements and letting Facebook optimize dynamically, your report would highlight that Facebook placements have an average cost per optimization event of $3, Instagram placements have an average cost per optimization event of $5, and Audience Network placements have an average cost per optimization event of $1. If your budget were $27, you’d get nine total optimization events at an average cost of $3 each.

The first instinct of a digital marketer would be to turn off the Instagram placement due to the higher cost to focus on the lower-cost Facebook and Audience Network placements. If that happened, then the below graphic highlights the new outcome.

www.facebook.com

The majority of the placements would still deliver the same result, but eliminating Instagram would drive up the average cost per optimization event of Audience Network placements from $1 to $3.40. The increased cost without Instagram placement is due to less audience inventory. The more placements enabled, the more inventory and less competition amongst advertisers. Instead of nine total optimization events, you’d only receive eight optimization events for your $27 budget due to the higher overall cost.

Not all placements are created equal in performance, but trying to outsmart the Facebook Algorithm can lead to underperforming results.

What are the Different Types of Facebook Placements?

There are currently a total of 14 placements to run ads, and we anticipate that number to grow as Facebook expands to more of their network of apps (we expect to see What’s App appear as a placement soon).

Below is a complete list of the placements currently available.

Feeds

Facebook Feed

Instagram Feed

Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Suggested Videos

Facebook Right Column

Stories

Facebook Stories

Instagram Stories

Messenger Stories

In-Stream

Facebook In-Stream Videos

Inbox and Messages

Messenger Inboxes

Messenger Sponsored Messages

Contextual Spaces

Facebook Instant Articles

More Apps and Sites

Audience Network Native, Banner, and Interstitial

Audience Network Rewarded Videos

Audience Network In-Stream Videos

How to Enable All Placements

As you can see, Facebook offers a lot of placements to run your ads, and it can be overwhelming. That’s why automatic placements are beneficial; you can let Facebook do all of the heavy lifting and optimize for the lowest cost.

Below are instructions on how to turn on automatic placements on Facebook.

Go to your Facebook Ads Manager to create a new campaign or edit an existing one. Be sure you’ve selected the Ad Sets tab (1) and then select the ad set you want to edit (2).

Once your ad set is open, scroll down until you reach the Placement section. Be sure the “Automatic Placements” box (1) is selected.

And that’s it!

Enabling the automatic placement feature is the easy part. Understanding how automatic placements work and why they are beneficial to your overall advertising strategy empowers you as an advertiser to maximize your ROI and drive the best results for your campaigns.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/social-media/maximize-your-facebook-ads-roi-with-automatic-placements.htm/feed0https://www.portent.com/blog/social-media/maximize-your-facebook-ads-roi-with-automatic-placements.htm7 Steps to Find the Best Podcasts for Your Ad Campaignhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/k6Bw6dU9zQw/7-steps-to-find-the-best-podcasts-for-your-ad-campaign.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/7-steps-to-find-the-best-podcasts-for-your-ad-campaign.htm#respondTue, 14 May 2019 15:00:59 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=47947Podcast advertising is among the most affordable, engaging and effective methods to tap into new audiences and build your brand. As of April 2019, the podcast industry includes more than 700,000 podcasts that have produced more than 29 million episodes, according to Podcast Insights. A majority of the U.S. population has listened to at least […]

Podcast advertising is among the most affordable, engaging and effective methods to tap into new audiences and build your brand.

As of April 2019, the podcast industry includes more than 700,000 podcasts that have produced more than 29 million episodes, according to Podcast Insights. A majority of the U.S. population has listened to at least one podcast, and unlike radio, online, or TV ads, 85 percent of users stay engaged throughout the whole podcast because the medium demands listeners’ attention and time. Plus, a study by Midroll shows that 72 percent of people who have listened to a podcast for four or more years have purchased a product advertised on that podcast.

If you’re considering using podcasts for marketing and advertising, the most important choices you’ll make are what audience you want to target and which podcasts to advertise with. These are complicated decisions, but we’ve devised seven steps that will help you choose the best podcasts for your brand to partner with.

Step 1: Choose a Demographic to Target

The first step to choosing a podcast is deciding who you want to target with your ad campaign.

“Generally, advertisers will come to us with an outline of who they’d like to target, and then we can work with them on finding the right fit depending on who the brand is,” says Heather Gordon, the director of digital sales at the CBC, which publishes a wide slate of award-winning podcasts like “Love Me” and “Someone Knows Something.”

To create the outline Gordon mentions, ask yourself these four questions:

What am I trying to sell or accomplish?

Why do my current customers buy this product or trust my brand?

Who else would buy the product or be interested in my brand?

What do both groups of people care about?

If you have previous user research into your current customer base, such as personas, surveys, or focus-group testing, this opportunity is the perfect time to use those resources to answer the four questions and guide your podcast search.

The process gets more complex if you don’t have a clearly defined user base or if your target audience is too large.

In that scenario, your best option is to use a list of standard demographic labels, such as gender, income, education, and interests. Afterward, perform user research on that demographic or get in touch with podcast publishers that have multiple shows to further explore your options.

Step 2: Identify a Unique Proposition for the Podcast Demographic

Now that you have an ideal podcast demographic, the second step is deciding what you can offer podcast listeners that they can’t get elsewhere.

This task is important on two fronts. First, the unique offer entices listeners because the value of “too good to pass up.” Second, the unique offer makes tracking the campaign success and ROI more effective.

The offer itself needs to have a clear value proposition. The common method is giving podcast listeners a steep product discount or free trial if they visit a podcast-specific landing page on your website, engage with your brand on social media, or use a promotional code during checkout.

For example, the SEO tool Ahrefs recently experimented with podcast advertising. In a blog post about their experiment, the author, Rebekah Bek, discussed creating account giveaway contests for listeners who tweet at the podcast and Ahrefs about why they should win a free account.

“It’s a win‐win for everyone involved: the podcast host gets a great prize to boost audience engagement and some extra social shares,” Bek wrote. “We get extra attention to our message and a way to gauge if the ad resonated well with that show’s audience.”

Although this promotional method is the most common approach, it’s not the only option. Another unique proposition you can create for podcast listeners to compare price points or features among other competing products while describing benefits that make your product superior.

As an example, Target advertised its new affordable bra line, Auden, on the podcast “Science Vs.” In the ad, the host, Wendy Zukerman, introduces the brand and then begins chatting about buying bras with a coworker, Alice. Alice complained about buying a fancy, poorly fitting bra online that cost nearly $70. Zukerman countered that the Auden bra line costs less than $22 and has ample sizes for most women.

After determining the offer or unique proposition, consider if you’re able to provide the podcast host with your product beforehand.

“A lot of times brands will offer the talent a product to experience first hand if they aren’t aware of it; this lends authenticity to the way the talent can then speak about the product or service,” Gordon says. “Having that genuine experience means they can talk more convincingly when they do the commercial or speak about it in their live read.”

If you consider this tactic, it’s important to be aware that not every podcast or publisher allows for hosts to give explicit endorsements or accept product trial arrangements. Public broadcast publishers are among the organizations that typically stay objective.

Step 3: Conduct User Research

Current and previous customers are among the most underused resources in podcast advertising. As we established, the podcast industry is flooded with more than 700,000 podcasts—stumbling on the perfect option without help is tough. But if you combine your brand’s user personas (and other demographic information) with surveys, you can quickly learn what podcasts your customers listen to.

This step works exceedingly well if your brand has an active presence on social media or a robust email newsletter. You can set up a free survey using tools like Google Forms and Survey Monkey. Below is an example.

If you don’t have access to enough customers to create a survey, don’t fret. Online tools like Survey Monkey, Survey Planet and SoGoSurvey can recruit survey participants within targeted demographic parameters.

Step 4: Use the User Research to Find Podcasts

Now that you have a list of podcasts your current and previous customers listen to (or, users within their demographic), begin researching those podcasts to determine if they’re a good fit with your brand and the ad you’d like to create.

We recommend focusing your efforts first on the most frequently mentioned podcasts. If one podcast doesn’t stand out as a clear winner, look for themes that jump out, such as genres, hosts, topics, or podcast publishers. Afterward, dig into popular podcasts within those correlations to narrow down your options.

While you’re researching podcasts, ask yourself these three questions:

How do the podcast hosts blend audience interests with the ads or sponsorship mentions?

What level of expertise do the hosts appear to have with the products they advertise?

If you can find audience demographics, does that data align with your ideal demographic?

If you’re still unsure of what podcasts to target, consider evaluating podcast publishers instead, which can help choose for you.

“What we like to do is encourage clients to consider an audience approach,” says Kathy Callaghan, the executive director of sponsorship at WNYC, which publishes award-winning podcasts like Radiolab and Snap Judgement. “Rather than picking and choosing specific shows, think about the audience and scale you can get by signing a collection of shows.”

After learning what a client’s goals are, Callaghan says she and her team work closely with that brand to understand what shows are working the best. Afterward, advertisers get the opportunity to increase the flight of advertisements for shows that are working better than others.

Step 5: Choose Among Pre-roll, Mid-roll or Post-roll

One of the common questions podcast hosts or publishers ask is where do you want your ad to run: the beginning, middle or end of an episode?

Pre-roll and post-roll ads are often 15-30 seconds long and premiere before or after the episode, respectively. Mid-roll ads range from one to two minutes and serve as an intermission. Each option usually costs different amounts, with mid-roll being the most expensive, and some podcasts will book one type of ad placement months in advance. Knowing what your ideal placement is further narrows your choices.

Step 6: Choose Your Advertisement Type: Baked-in vs. Dynamic

After you’ve determined where in the episode you’d ideally like your ad to run, the next choice is what type of advertisement you want the host or publisher to include. Usually, you have two ad options: baked-in and dynamically inserted.

A baked-in ad is read live by the podcast host and becomes part of the episode itself. Every user will hear the same advertisement, regardless of when they listen to the episode.

Contrarily, a dynamically inserted ad is included in the episode by an ad server after the podcast is recorded. Dynamic ads rotate throughout the year, letting publishers target specific podcast audience demographics. Ultimately, not every listener will hear the same ad.

Podcast publishers may not offer both options, so choose who you want to partner with carefully.

Step 7: Chat with the Podcast Host or Production Team

Now that you’re empowered with the knowledge of who you want to target, what you’ll offer that audience, what type of ad you’d like to serve and where it should live, you’re ready to begin chatting with the podcast hosts or publishers.

At the start of your conversation, the podcast team will likely ask you about the following topics, most of which are centered on your campaign goals:

What are you trying to achieve?

What are your KPIs?

Who are you trying to connect with?

What sort of content do you want to be aligned with?

“It’s really about listening to our clients, and then based on our knowledge of our catalogue, working with them to find the best fit,” says Robin Neufeld, the director of content marketing at CBC. “Often the best fit is a number of podcasts over a flight, just to test out different creative, podcasts, [or] genres.”

While you’re chatting with brands and answering these questions, it’s important to remember the podcast industry is full of noise and podcasts with varying levels of quality and reach. Neufeld, Gordon, and Callaghan all emphasize you should choose to talk and partner with brands with enough audience trust, reach, and loyalty to achieve your goals.

“The ideal scenario is those instances where you have a partnership with a client and you agree that you’re going to learn together about what makes the most sense for their brand,” Callaghan says.

Discovering what makes sense for your brand and the podcasts you’re partnering with is crucial. That’s because podcasts are a powerful storytelling medium thanks to the intimate connection listeners have with the show hosts. When an ad pops up on a podcast, it’s closer to having a conversation with a good friend rather than hearing a blaring radio spot. Now is the perfect time to take advantage of this connection and include podcast advertising in your marketing strategy.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/7-steps-to-find-the-best-podcasts-for-your-ad-campaign.htm/feed0https://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/7-steps-to-find-the-best-podcasts-for-your-ad-campaign.htmWhat Goals Should I Be Tracking in My Analytics Tool?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/9CFuM9JBxUM/what-goals-should-i-be-tracking-in-my-analytics-tool.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/analytics/what-goals-should-i-be-tracking-in-my-analytics-tool.htm#respondThu, 09 May 2019 17:00:03 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=47910What comes to mind when you think of the word “goal”? Most people, myself included, think of personal goals or ambitions for your own life: obtaining a master’s degree, losing 15 pounds, or traveling to every continent. Others think of business goals: reaching an annual sales target, launching a new product or service, or expanding […]

Most people, myself included, think of personal goals or ambitions for your own life: obtaining a master’s degree, losing 15 pounds, or traveling to every continent.

Others think of business goals: reaching an annual sales target, launching a new product or service, or expanding from selling in local to global markets.

Analytics goals are different. In this post, we’ll untangle the definition of goals and help you understand what to configure as a goal in your analytics platform. We’ll use Google Analytics as an example today, but you can configure similar goals in most analytics tools.

How do Analytics Goals Differ from Business Goals?

To tease out a proper distinction between an analytics goal and a business goal, we need to understand how it’s defined in the platform you work in. Google Analytics defines a goal as:

“…a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business.”

Since Google Analytics primarily tracks websites and apps, the implication is that the “completed activities” they mention as goals are online activities. Whereas business goals can (and do) often include offline measures that are impossible for a user of your website or app to accomplish.

Naturally, there’s a lot of overlap in analytics goals and business goals for companies that do a large percentage of their sales online, like e-commerce retailers or gaming app developers.

Destination Pages are the easiest way to get up and running. Making a list of all the “thank you” pages that a user could reach on your site and which activities they map to (i.e., a completed sale, a demo request, a trial request, or a download of a gated asset) is a good start.

But depending on how your site is built, some online activities don’t result in a unique page being reached. Forms can be submitted without the URL in the browser changing. Call-to-action buttons can be clicked without the user being whisked away to another page. In those instances, Event Tracking is the fix. Google Tag Manager enables marketers to listen for those form fills and clicks and send an event into Google Analytics with a category, action, label, and value.

What Are Some Prerequisites for Analytics Goals?

Knowing how to configure goals is only one piece of the puzzle. I’m sure you’re all tempted to race to your Google Analytics admin and add all the thank you pages you can find. But before you do, you should ask yourself if those pages or events meet a few criteria.

Here are some good rules of thumb when considering whether a certain activity should be set up as a goal:

A goal must be evergreen. A visitor should be able to accomplish them as long as your website (or app) exists. Google Analytics only allows you 20 goal slots per view. You don’t want to occupy one of your 20 goal slots with a thank you page for a temporary campaign that will only be live for one month.

A goal must require action on the part of the visitor. Views of a category or product page, even if they’re important for you to measure, are not good goals because people can accomplish them sometimes just by landing on your website, without any engagement at all. Pages that can only be reached with an action—a form fill or a purchase—are better candidates.

A goal must map to your business objectives. I already mentioned why business goals and analytics goals aren’t always the same, but they should always have some kind of relationship. If you can’t demonstrate how a visitor achieving your analytics goal has an impact on brand awareness, customer loyalty, or revenue, it’s probably too generic.

A goal must result in a conversion rate of less than 33%. This seems counterintuitive, but hear me out: If more than a third of your visitors are able to accomplish an analytics goal, it’s too easy of an action for them to take and probably not a meaningful way for you to segment them versus an average user of your site.

Primary Goals

Once you’re sure a goal meets the prerequisites above, you should prioritize which ones you set up first. I call these primary goals. They have a direct connection to how much money your business makes.

Some examples of primary goals include:

Revenue. If you run an e-commerce business, this might go without saying. And you may already be measuring revenue by virtue of your enhanced e-commerce configuration. But there’s value in setting up goals for your cart thank you page. Why? Funnels.

Funnels allow you to configure a linear path from a cart summary page to a sale and report on drop-off at each step, which is valuable in determining where you have friction in your cart process.

Subscription Sign-Ups. If you run a subscription model business, sign-ups where you gain a customer’s credit card information work here. If it’s a free trial where no credit card is required at the time of sign-up, I would consider holding off configuring that goal until later (see secondary goals below).

Leads. For a B2B business, where it’s impossible to close a sale online, lead form measurement is key. But not all lead forms are created equal. Some only require an email address. The ones you need to measure here are forms that generate enough information for you to evaluate whether the prospect is a Marketing Qualified Lead or Sales Qualified Lead. That means you need to be collecting a name, a company, an email, a title, and potentially a phone number.

Event Registrations. The same goes for events. If somebody RSVPs for a free meetup, that doesn’t qualify here. It needs to be a paid event only.

Secondary Goals

For goals that don’t have a direct connection to revenue, but are still important to moving people along in discovery of your product or service, consider configuring those next. Secondary goals are tipping points to sales, socially sharing your products or services in the marketplace, or building your house list for future marketing efforts.

Good choices for secondary goals include:

Email Newsletters. If somebody wants to give you an email address to receive future discounts, news, or product information, that’s gold. It gives you a touchpoint for reaching back out to a user who may have otherwise just left your website.

Gated Assets. Collecting emails in exchange for a useful ebook, webinar, or whitepaper is also super common.

Lesser Leads. You might also have other forms on your site that have fewer fields or a generic “contact us” form that really doesn’t give you any sort of implied intent on the part of the user. These might create leads which require more vetting on the part of the sales team.

Shares of Blog Posts or Products. Don’t forget amplification of your message by interested parties via social or email. Even if the person visiting your site isn’t in the market for what you offer, they might share it with someone who is. That reach is just as valuable.

Registrations for Free Events. As with gated assets, you might provide tickets to a meetup in exchange for an email or a social follow.

Tertiary Goals

Lastly, we have goals that indicate a higher level of engagement from the visitor to your site or app, but do not constitute a contact or a sale.

Video Views. Folks who watch videos about a product or service may just be curious, but studies find that they tend to purchase at a higher rate than most website visitors.

Ungated Assets. Many businesses offer free tools or downloads where no email is required. There’s something to be said for being useful to your target audience without a quid-pro-quo so that they’ll remember you when they want to buy.

Clicks of Major CTA Buttons. Online marketing and merchandising only works if we can convince people to click on “learn more” or “buy now” buttons. Upper-funnel content on websites might not have a form to fill out or another more substantial action to take, so recognizing which CTA buttons work to encourage people to move deeper into the site is paramount.

Average Session Duration. I’m generally not a fan of pageview or time on site based goals. More pageviews can indicate a person is lost on your site and can’t find what they need. Higher time on site could mean they stepped away from their laptop to make a sandwich. But when you add some qualifiers and look at averages across your entire visitor base, they can become more helpful. Look for users who exceed 3x the site average (excluding bounces).

Some Other Goal Considerations

So you’ve established these goals. Now what? Your data is only as valuable as what you do with it, and here are some ideas for action:

Build segments for any user that accomplishes a secondary or tertiary goal. Use those segments to understand how much more likely those users are to accomplish primary goals than your average site user.

Build audiences for any user that accomplishes a secondary or tertiary goal, but not the primary goals. Use those audiences to run remarketing campaigns in Google Ads. This is a pretty handy audience because these users are qualified, but may need a nudge to complete the conversion funnel.

Set incremental growth targets for these goals every year. If you know that 1,000/month convert to a lead form, set a target to improve that by 10% on top of your current pace. We set these goals because we care about improving these metrics.

Trust Your Gut With Goals

This isn’t an exhaustive list or a be-all and end-all set of rules. You know what’s meaningful to your business and what really moves the needle. Experiment with additional Google Analytics views that can house another set of 20 goals if you’re not sure about what you’ve got in your main view.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/analytics/what-goals-should-i-be-tracking-in-my-analytics-tool.htm/feed0https://www.portent.com/blog/analytics/what-goals-should-i-be-tracking-in-my-analytics-tool.htmWhat is Duplicate Content and How Does it Affect Your SEO?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/1WEDSilfZUI/what-is-duplicate-content-and-how-does-it-affect-seo.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/what-is-duplicate-content-and-how-does-it-affect-seo.htm#commentsTue, 07 May 2019 17:45:24 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=47841 Regardless of whether duplicate content is accidental or the result of someone stealing blocks of text from your web pages, it must be addressed and handled correctly. It doesn’t matter if you manage a website for a small business or a large corporation; every site is vulnerable to the threat that duplicate content poses […]

Regardless of whether duplicate content is accidental or the result of someone stealing blocks of text from your web pages, it must be addressed and handled correctly.

It doesn’t matter if you manage a website for a small business or a large corporation; every site is vulnerable to the threat that duplicate content poses to SEO rankings.

In this article, I will explain how to find duplicate content, how to determine whether it’s affecting you internally or across other domains, and how to manage the duplicate content properly.

What Constitutes Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content refers to blocks of content that are either completely identical to one another (exact duplicates) or very similar, also known as common or near-duplicates. Near-duplicate content refers to two pieces of content with only minor differences.

Of course, having some similar content is natural and sometimes unavoidable (i.e., quoting another article on the internet).

The Different Types of Duplicate Content

There are two types of duplicate content:

Internal duplicate content is when one domain creates duplicate content through multiple internal URLs (on the same website).

External duplicate content, also known as cross-domain duplicates, occurs when two or more different domains have the same page copy indexed by the search engines.

Both external and internal duplicate content can occur as exact-duplicates or near-duplicates.

Is Duplicate Content Bad For SEO?

Officially, Google does not impose a penalty for duplicate content. However, it does filter identical content, which has the same impact as a penalty: a loss of rankings for your web pages.

Duplicate content confuses Google and forces the search engine to choose which of the identical pages it should rank in the top results. Regardless of who produced the content, there is a high possibility that the original page will not be the one chosen for the top search results.

Internal Duplicate Content Issues

On-Page Elements

To avoid duplicate content issues, make sure that each page on your site has:

a unique page title and meta description in the HTML code of the page

headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) that differ from other pages on your website

The page title, meta description, and headings make up a minimal amount of the content on a page. However, it’s safer to keep your website out of the gray area of duplicate content as much as possible. It’s also an excellent way to have search engines see value in your meta descriptions.

If you cannot write a unique meta description for each page as you have too many pages, then exclude it. Most of the time, Google takes snippets from your content and presents it as the meta description anyway. However, it is still better to write a custom meta description if you can, as it is a critical element in driving click-throughs.

Product descriptions

Understandably, creating unique product descriptions is challenging for many eCommerce companies, as it can take a lot of time to write original descriptions for each product on a website.

However, if you want to rank for “Rickenbacker 4003 Electric Bass Guitar,” you have to differentiate your product page for Rickenbacker 4003 from all the other websites offering that product.

If you sell your products through third-party retailer websites or have other resellers offering your product, then provide each source with a unique description.

Product variations, such as size or color, should ideally not be on separate pages. Utilize web design elements so that all the variations of a product are kept on one page.

URL Parameters

Another common issue with duplicate content found on eCommerce sites (though, not exclusive to eCommerce) comes from URL parameters.

Some websites use URL parameters to create page URL variations (for example, ?sku=5136840, &primary-color=blue, &sort=popular), which might lead to search engines indexing different versions of the URLs, including the parameters.

WWW, HTTP, and The Trailing Slash

An often overlooked area of internal duplicate content is around URLs with:

www (http://www.example.com) and without www (http://example.com)

http (http://www.example.com) and https (https://www.example.com)

a trailing slash at the end of a URL (http://www.example.com/) and without a trailing slash (http://www.example.com)

A quick way to check for these issues is to take a section of unique text from your most valuable landing pages, put the text in quotes, and search for it on Google. Google will then search for that exact string of text. If more than one page shows up in the search results, then you will have to look closely to determine why that’s happening by first looking into the possibility of the three options listed above.

If you find that your website either has a conflicting www vs. non-www or trailing slashes vs. non-trailing slashes, then you will have to set up a 301 redirect from the non-preferred version to the preferred one.

Note: There is no SEO benefit to using or not using www or the trailing slash in your URLs. It is a matter of personal preference.

External Duplicate Content Issues

If you have a significant amount of valuable content, there is a good chance that it will end up being republished on another website. As flattering as this may be, you will have to do without it. Here are the different ways duplicate content occurs externally:

Scraped Content

Scraped content is when a website owner steals content from another website in an attempt to increase the organic visibility of their site. Webmasters who scrape content can also attempt to have machines “rewrite” the scraped content they stole.

Scraped content can occasionally be easy to identify as the scrapers sometimes don’t bother to replace branded terms throughout the content.

How the manual action penalty works: a human reviewer at Google will review the website to determine if a page is compliant with Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines. If you are flagged for trying to manipulate Google’s search index, you will either find your website has been ranked significantly lower or removed from the search results entirely.

If you are the victim of scraped content, you should inform Google by reporting the webspam under the “Copyright and other legal issues” option.

Syndicated Content

Content syndication is when another website republishes your content that, most likely, originally appeared in your blog. It’s not the same as getting your content scraped because it’s something you volunteered to have shared on another site.

As crazy as this may sound, there is a benefit to syndicating your content. It makes your content more visible, which can lead to more traffic to your website. In other words, you are trading content and possibly search engine rankings for links back to your site.

How to Check for Duplicate Content

If you have web pages rich with content that are declining in their search engine rankings, then you should check if your content has been copied and used on another website. Here are some ways you can do this:

Exact-Match Search

Copy a few sentences of text from one of your web pages, put it in quotation marks, and search for it in Google. By using quotation marks, you’re telling Google that you want results that return that exact text. If multiple results show up, then someone has copied your content.

Copyscape

Copyscape is a free tool that checks your web page text for duplicate content found on other domains. If the text on your page has been scraped, the offending URL will show up in the results.

You vs. Duplicate Content

Let’s face it; you didn’t work so hard to produce original content to have someone steal your work and outrank you in the search results.

The growing threat of duplicate content can seem overwhelming and will likely require much time to combat, but the work involved in managing it will be well worth the ROI.

If you follow the advice given and get serious about managing duplicate content, you will improve your rankings and ward off scrapers, thieves, and clueless newbies.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/what-is-duplicate-content-and-how-does-it-affect-seo.htm/feed5https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/what-is-duplicate-content-and-how-does-it-affect-seo.htmIs Podcast Advertising Effective?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/j6M-C5T5l5o/is-podcast-advertising-effective.htm
Thu, 02 May 2019 13:55:10 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=47774Podcasts are growing in popularity. According to Edison Research, the podcast audience has grown to 90 million listeners a month, up 113% since 2014. An increase in listenership in this medium means you have a chance to spend advertising dollars, reaching new and current audiences in different ways. But just because you can, doesn’t mean […]

Podcasts are growing in popularity. According to Edison Research, the podcast audience has grown to 90 million listeners a month, up 113% since 2014. An increase in listenership in this medium means you have a chance to spend advertising dollars, reaching new and current audiences in different ways. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you necessarily should.

Spending part of your budget on a new method of advertising or convincing your boss that this is a good idea will more than likely cause you to pause. How do you know if spending money on podcast advertising is actually worth it? Will you see results? Even if other brands are seeing results, how do you know you will?

In this post, we explain the reasons why podcast advertising is effective and help you determine whether it makes sense for you to spend your money on it.

Why is Podcast Advertising Effective?

Although it is currently difficult to track hard metrics for podcast advertising, there are still some compelling reasons why we believe podcast advertising is effective. Let’s dive into them below:

There’s a Strong Host-to-Listener Connection

If you’ve ever gotten hooked on a podcast, it’s almost certainly in part because you felt a connection with the host. That’s because of what Glenn Rubenstein, the author of Podcast Advertising Works, calls “the voice inside your head.”

According to Rubenstein, “If you spend even a short amount of time listening to the radio, an audiobook, or a podcast, you begin to make a connection to the voice you’re hearing. After you spend hours listening to that same voice on a daily or weekly basis, it feels just like you’re listening to a friend.”

It makes sense. If you’re an avid podcast listener with a long commute, you could be spending up to 5-10 hours a week listening to the same podcast host. And who do you trust more than anyone? The people with whom you spend the most time and/or admire.

When you trust someone, it’s likely you’ll value their recommendations more than anyone else’s. The idea behind this is the same as word-of-mouth marketing and influencer marketing, and it works with podcast advertising, too.

When a host recommends a product, you’re more likely to remember it and purchase it.

You can see the direct correlation between an affinity for the host and the purchase of products in a study done by Midroll, which found that 72% of people who have listened to a podcast for four or more years have made a purchase because of that podcast. Additionally, 63% of Midroll podcast listeners have bought a product they heard advertised on a podcast.

Listeners are Engaged

Unlike more passive forms of media like TV and radio, if done well, people will search for and subscribe to podcasts—coming back repeatedly for more. This is a unique opportunity to connect with your audience when they’re actively engaged and ready to hear your message.

One of the reasons people are so engaged with podcasts is because they require your brain to create images of the story in your mind (unlike visual media, which provides those images for you).

Emma Rodero, a communications professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, explains that “…like reading, listening to audio allows people to create their own versions of characters and scenes in the story.” She believes that listening, is more active, “since the brain has to process the information at the pace it is played.”

Many of today’s podcasts also have staff, budget, and industry experience, and subsequently the ability to use sound effects and music in addition to just talking heads. The use of sound effects increases the level of mental imagery, causing listeners to pay more attention.

People are also engaged with podcasts because they’re often listening to them when they’re by themselves—cooking, driving, walking the dog, or working out. When people are alone, they’re less distracted and more able to fully tune in. Additionally, wearing headphones while you listen creates an even more intimate experience.

Add to this the fact that streaming audio is now easier than ever before, with newer models of cars becoming more connected with capabilities such as Bluetooth and USB cables.

“Connected cars are a boon for the entire streaming audio industry, but they’re especially exciting for podcast makers, whose shows are perfectly suited to in-car listening,” Kevin Roose says, “Just as TV watchers can now choose Netflix or Amazon streams over surfing channels, radio listeners will soon have a bevy of on-demand options at their disposal.”

You Can Accurately Target Your Audience

Your ability to target specific audiences through podcast advertising is one of the most compelling reasons to give this medium a shot.

“I think that the great thing about podcasts is that there is literally one for everyone,” says Christine Merrill, Account Executive at Gimlet Media. “There are so many podcasts in the world, and there are so many different niches.”

At Portent, we’ve seen this ourselves with podcast advertisements that we developed alongside our client MagellanTV, a documentary streaming service.

MagellanTV has many different genres of documentaries available, which allowed us to drill down our targeting. We could have gone after any podcasts with available advertising slots—after all, most people are interested in documentaries. Instead, knowing that they have a specific niche in history and science, we started with podcasts that focused on the same subjects.

In targeting those subject areas, we found that the podcast hosts were genuinely excited to work with MagellanTV because it was such a natural fit. In one instance, the host of a podcast we targeted accidentally doubled their time when talking about MagellanTV because they were so stoked about the streaming service (which they were able to try out before they recorded the ad).

You Don’t Necessarily Need a Huge Budget

Podcasts are priced on CPMs (Cost Per Mille, or thousand listeners). A CPM pricing model makes sense—the more popular a show, the higher the price of the advertising slots.

Initial prices may seem like a lot, but if you sponsor multiple episodes the pricing goes down, which is also better for brand awareness.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. MagellanTV sponsored the History on Fire podcast, which gets ~150,000 downloads per episode, at a cost of $2,000 per episode.

For one of our client’s who is in the development space, we placed ads with Developer Tea, which gets ~60,000 downloads per episode. We spent $1,500 per episode on ad spots.

You may be thinking, but the audience size is so tiny, what’s the point?

Hack the Entrepreneur, another podcast we worked with, gets ~14,000 downloads per episode, but we saw the highest time on site (10:39) and page views (106) from this ad. Within the same campaign, we placed ads with The $100 MBA. They average ~70,000 downloads per episode, but our time on site was only 4:17 and our page views were 52—about half of the engagement we saw with Hack the Entrepreneur.

Don’t shy away from an opportunity just because it’s small. Think of it as you would keyword research. Even though some search terms have a smaller keyword volume, that doesn’t mean they’re not worth targeting; you can still go after long-tail keywords with smaller search volume if the user intent is there.

How Do I Know If Podcast Advertising is Right for Me? Things to Consider

Although podcast advertising is effective, that still doesn’t mean it’s right for every brand.

Below, we’ll explain a few things to think about before you start setting aside a budget for podcast advertising.

Challenges with Audience Metrics

If you’re pitching this to your boss, it’s likely they’re asking how you plan on measuring the ROI.

With podcast advertising, the answer isn’t simple. Podcast advertising analytics is still very much in its early stages, so we don’t have quick and easy-to-read metrics like we’re used to. We also don’t have a direct way to track conversions. Some podcasts offer their own independent tracking, but there aren’t any consistent practices in place yet.

There are, however, a few metrics we can start looking at now such as:

Although it is still challenging at this point, there is good news on the horizon. Apple Podcasts is investing in podcast performance insights and Spotify acquired Gimlet Media and Anchor, two data-driven podcast platforms.

There isn’t an easy way to measure the efficacy of radio or TV advertising either, but advertisers continue to spend their dollars there. Don’t let the lack of current analytics stop you from experimenting with a possible new way to connect with your audience. We believe that podcast advertising analytics are going to get more sophisticated in the future as the medium continues to grow.

Challenges with Scheduling

You need to be comfortable with planning ahead if you want to run a podcast advertising campaign.

With the model we’ve been using at Portent, we start two months before we actually launch any promotions. Ultimately, this is dependent upon the popularity of the podcasts we’re working with. For podcasts with larger audiences, seeking out an ad placement spot on their calendar six months in advance may still not be enough time.

We recently tried to place ads on the Syntax podcast for the same client we mentioned above that’s in the development space. Syntax has ~28,000 downloads per episode, but they were booking their ad placements out six months in advance, which didn’t give us enough time.

Fizzle is another podcast that we worked with for the same campaign and client. Fizzle gets ~11,000 downloads per episode, and we were able to book with them two months in advance.

How far in advance you need to book depends on the popularity of the podcast spots you’re going after. Overall, schedules and budgets vary greatly. You may even be able to haggle and get a spot at a lower price.

Ultimately, we recommend researching what podcasts you’d potentially like to sponsor, reaching out to them, and seeing what they say. Once you start scheduling spots, you should stay organized by creating a calendar such as the one below:

Types of Ad Placements

It’s important to determine what type of ad placements you want for your campaign.

In podcast advertising, there are three different types of ads: pre-roll, interstitial or mid-roll, and post-roll.

Pre-roll ads: occur at the beginning of an episode.Mid-roll ads: occur in the middle or as a break during the show.Post-roll ads: occur after the episode.

We believe that mid-roll ads are the most effective because people are highly unlikely to stop what they’re doing and skip past the commercials. If the ad is at the beginning or the end, they may skip it entirely. Because of this, mid-roll ad placements are typically the most expensive.

However, some podcasts will require you to use a combination of pre-roll and mid-roll ads. Having a mix of the two can work well.

Pre-roll ads can give listeners that first exposure to your brand, followed by mid-rolls to explain what you’re offering and who you are.

Running one mid-roll ad followed by multiple pre-roll ads can also work.

Bonobos frequently runs a full-60-second mid-roll ad the first week and then follows up with a few weeks of pre-roll.

This approach helps them keep their costs down while also repeatedly exposing the podcast audience to their brand since they know listeners usually listen to every episode.

Advertising Styles

In addition to the different types of ad placements, there are different styles for interstitial or mid-roll ads. You’ll need to check with your podcast host to determine what type of ads they provide.

Sponsor-produced ad: typically ends with a clear call to action and uses music, sound effects, or a voice-over artist.

Host-read produced ad: delivered by the show host but is often produced and may include an interview with a sponsor’s customer(s).

Host-read integrated ad: read by the show’s host organically during the recording of the show.

If done well, the host-read integrated ad can be one of the most effective styles of podcast advertising because it feels so genuine.

As we mentioned in the MagellanTV example, if you allow the host to use your product or service before they record the podcast ad, and it’s a good fit, they’ll be genuinely excited about sharing it with their audience.

Is Podcasting Going to Be Effective For Your Brand? A Checklist

Although podcast advertising is successful for many brands, there’s still a lot to consider before you decide to bring the idea to your boss and spend your budget on it. We recommend asking yourself the following questions to determine whether or not you’re ready to give it a go:

What are you advertising?

What is your product/service? Are you clear about who you are as a brand?

Does podcast advertising make sense for your audience?

Who are you planning on targeting through podcast advertisements? Does your target demographic listen to podcasts? What podcasts do they likely listen to?

What are you offering?

Are you running an awareness campaign, or do you have an actual service or product for which you can give a discount or free trial?

Is it that good of an offer?

Is the product or service ready for market? Is the price of the product competitive? Are you running any better offers, discounts, or lower prices elsewhere? Note: We do not advise this. If people do a quick Google search and find a better offer elsewhere, guess which one they will choose?

What is your budget?

How much money do you have to spend? If you have a low budget, are there podcasts out there with lower prices, but highly targeted audiences that would fit your demographic? If you have a high budget, how much of it are you willing to allocate to podcast advertising?

What is your timeline?

When are you planning on launching your campaign? Give your budget and which podcasts you want to advertise on, do you realistically have enough time to launch?

At the end of the day, authenticity is key when it comes to successful podcast advertising. If your product/service is market-ready and you can find podcasts that fit your niche, we recommend launching a few ads to test and see what works and what doesn’t.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/is-podcast-advertising-effective.htmIs Direct Traffic an Indicator of Brand Strength?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/ImUYXBp1LZo/is-direct-traffic-an-indicator-of-brand-strength.htm
Tue, 30 Apr 2019 13:35:21 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=47751If you’ve gone into Google Analytics lately to look at your website performance, you’ll notice a large chunk of traffic and conversions attributed to “Direct.” It’s tempting to think all those visitors came to your website because they either already know your brand, or saw some kind of offline advertising you did. But in this […]

If you’ve gone into Google Analytics lately to look at your website performance, you’ll notice a large chunk of traffic and conversions attributed to “Direct.”

It’s tempting to think all those visitors came to your website because they either already know your brand, or saw some kind of offline advertising you did. But in this post, we’ll lay out a few reasons why that isn’t always the case, and what you can do to get a true understanding of your brand strength in Google Analytics.

Some Background on “Direct” Traffic

A very common misconception in digital marketing is that Direct traffic is registered when a user visits your website by typing your URL into their browser, or from bookmarking the site.

This might have to do with Google’s definition of Direct source traffic, which is as “users that typed your URL directly into their browser, or who had bookmarked your site.”

For example, if you’re getting Direct traffic to pages deep in your website, or to URLs that would be unnatural for someone to type into a browser, then that traffic is likely “dark” traffic. Depending on the page content and volume of landing page sessions, a bookmark may also not be likely.

However, “dark” does not necessarily mean “bad” traffic. It simply means that Google Analytics cannot track where the user came from when they arrived on your site. The reality is that there is a growing number of reasons for this. Some examples of sources that GA sometimes cannot track are:

App referrals

Text messages

Incognito/secure browsing

Social platforms

Bots

However, there are tools at your disposal to make corrections for some of these instances. If you know you are sending traffic to your site that is not within Google defined segments, you can build your own custom segment and capture some of that misattributed traffic.

Another common source of Direct traffic comes from third-party booking sites, which can be fixed with cross-domain tracking.

Mobile traffic also tends to generate more traffic than Desktop. Redirects from HTTP to HTTPS may also break the user path in a way that Google can’t track. Even the browser you use may contribute to what Source/Medium data is available to GA. These instances are where “Direct” becomes a catch-all for anything GA can’t attribute with a defined Source or Medium.

Direct Traffic That is Actually Direct

While those caveats might seem overwhelming, it’s not time to throw out your Direct traffic metric just yet. There is obviously a good portion of your Direct traffic that is truly Direct.

Reviewing the landing pages of your Direct traffic is a good indication of what is legitimate.

Traffic that lands directly on the homepage is likely real Direct traffic because that is what users are most likely to type into a browser. Direct traffic to other URLs with short page paths may also be legitimate traffic.

In terms of visibility, this difference in Direct traffic to the homepage could be a good indication of how well-known your brand is to users on the internet. Big brands like Nordstrom will tend to see higher volumes of Direct traffic, where small start-ups don’t see the same level of brand recognition reflected in their Direct traffic.

For example, we work with a large e-commerce retailer whose brand name is commonplace. Over the past quarter, 68% of their Direct traffic was to the homepage. For a smaller client brand, around 20% of Direct traffic went to their homepage.

Direct Traffic as a Piece of the Brand Strength Puzzle

Now that we have an understanding of the right components of Direct traffic to be looking for, how do we use it as an indicator of brand strength?

To get a full picture of brand strength in GA, we recommend combining the following sources:

“Real” Direct traffic. Likely by homepage landing page traffic, and other pages you determine are appropriate.

Organic traffic to the homepage. This captures people who type brand names into a search engine and click the homepage link in the search engine results.

Traffic from Paid Search campaigns that are triggered by branded keywords. This captures the second group of brand-name-Googlers who click on paid branded ads, instead of the organic homepage listing.

We’ve built this out in Google Analytics as a custom segment, free for your use. Download it and update the “Landing Page” and “Keyword” fields to capture information specific to your company.

The next time you’re asked about brand strength, refer back to what we’ve laid out here to get an answer backed by your data. There are so many ways to gauge the strength of your brand but by using Google Analytics and understanding the appropriate indicators, you can be readily equipped to clearly answer that question.

]]>https://www.portent.com/blog/analytics/is-direct-traffic-an-indicator-of-brand-strength.htmUse This SEO Strategy for Your Next Website Redesignhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/p0Me4XNj9pQ/website-redesign-seo-strategy.htm
https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/website-redesign-seo-strategy.htm#commentsThu, 25 Apr 2019 16:10:36 +0000https://www.portent.com/?p=47715Redesigning your website presents a significant risk from an SEO standpoint if not managed appropriately. What can be years of optimizations to your infrastructure, design, and content are going to be overwritten, and it’s hard to predict if the organic rankings you’ve earned are going to be swept away. If your redesign strategy includes taking […]

Redesigning your website presents a significant risk from an SEO standpoint if not managed appropriately.

What can be years of optimizations to your infrastructure, design, and content are going to be overwritten, and it’s hard to predict if the organic rankings you’ve earned are going to be swept away.

If your redesign strategy includes taking SEO into account post-launch, you’ll probably end up in for a world of hurt.

Here’s a look at organic traffic from a brand that came to us after launching a new beautifully designed site, wondering what happened to their SEO traffic.

Don’t be that website.

If your brand heavily relies on organic search to drive traffic, engagement, and conversion metrics, the risks from a redesign are real, and the impact can be devastating.

But through careful consideration throughout the redesign process, you can account for potential pitfalls and mitigate your chances of a drop in organic search ranking and traffic post-launch.

Follow along as I outline how we approach this at Portent.

How to Approach SEO Strategy in your Next Redesign

For many websites, organic search is the channel that brings in the most traffic, and inherently, conversions- whether that be leads or transactions and revenue.

Adding to that, organic traffic is the acquisition channel most at-risk through a significant website redesign.

SEO isn’t a tactic to employ after the website launches to clean up loose ends. Approaching your redesign with SEO in mind from the very beginning of the project is vital to ensure your channel’s requirements are baked into the result.

The key to preserving organic rankings through a redesign is two-fold:

1. Marketers must focus on minimizing risk pre-launch

2. Marketers must have a response plan to threats post-launch

With that in mind, our approach to minimizing risk and building a response plan requires us to include an SEO-minded team member in the project from the very start, identify and address gaps in the marketing stack throughout the redesign process, and quantify the impact on organic KPIs post-launch.

This approach lines up with three stages of the project:

The planning and design stage (before any code is written)

The development stage (when the website is being built)

The post-launch stage (after the dust settles)

Let’s explore each of these stages further.

Get SEO Involved Early

The best way to handle potential SEO issues in a redesign project is to prevent them from existing in the first place. SEO for a website redesign starts long before the first line of code is written.

Get your SEO team a seat at the table from the very first meeting.

Their role on the project is to find solutions to infrastructure and content issues that may crop up. Providing a list of SEO requirements and expecting a designer or developer to take them into consideration isn’t enough.

SEO must be hands-on throughout the process.

Don’t wait for infrastructure decisions to be made for you. You may end up with a funky hosting plan, three subdomains, and two of them running on Wix.

(We’ve seen it happen.)

As an SEO, here are some of the questions to consider when kicking off a redesign process:

Is the new CMS or framework SEO-friendly?

Will you need to prerender JavaScript?

Does the new information architecture include your essential landing pages?

How many URLs are going to change?

Find the Gaps

As your new website starts coming together, you should ask yourself the question, “is this website more or less optimized than before?”

To answer this, you need to conduct two SEO audits of the website’s infrastructure and content: pre-launch and post-launch.

The goal of the pre-launch audit is to find all of the big problems that you can’t afford to launch with. Auditing a website that isn’t finished yet may seem premature, but it’s a great exercise; it allows you to correct any show-stopping bugs you may find.

This audit is where your SEO team will do most of the work involved with a typical redesign:

Redirecting old URLs to new URLs

Migrating title and meta description tags

Correcting broken links and unnecessary redirects

Testing mobile rendering

Ensuring canonicalization

The pre-launch audit should also communicate gaps between the two websites in a few key areas:

Site structure

Conversion

Your post-launch audit should uncover any new bugs and make sure the website is being crawled and indexed correctly.

Some important factors to review post-launch are:

Robots.txt (It’s incredibly common for websites to go live disallowing all crawling)

Sitemap submission in Google and Bing search consoles

The index coverage report in Google Search Console

Checking redirect implementation

Doing two thorough audits goes a long way toward minimizing risk.

Any major threat to your rankings will be identified and hopefully addressed before launch, and everything else will be a known quantity. At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of which way your site’s performance will go.

Measure the Impact

Before you launch your new site, make sure your web analytics and rank tracking are recording reliable baseline data for your KPIs.

Also, confirm the new website has your web analytics implemented correctly. You don’t want to launch with all of your conversion goals broken.

I find these metrics and trends the most useful when gauging post-launch performance:

Organic users by landing page

If you didn’t change your URL structure, this report will be incredibly helpful in narrowing down performance gaps.

Organic users by website section

This report will help you find problems with the design or internal linking structure for sections that aren’t doing well.

Non-brand keyword rankings

For each important landing page, add the non-brand keywords contributing the most traffic to a rank tracker. If any of these rankings take a dive after launch, you’ll know which topics you need to prioritize.

Conversion rate by landing page

If your sales copy or CTA links had a drastic change in the new design, this report would let you know which pages will need their offers reconsidered.

Bounce rate and exit rate by website section

Increases in either after the launch might indicate usability problems with the new design for that section.

Common SEO Pitfalls

There are SEO problems so common to redesigns that I’ve seen one in nearly every launch I’ve cleaned up.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by making these mistakes:

Unnecessarily changing the URL structure

The best way to map old URLs to new URLs is to not change them at all. Plus, you won’t break year-over-year reports in Google Analytics. Unless you have a good reason, don’t change your URLs in a redesign.

Not redirecting URLs with backlinks

If you have to change your URLs for a new website, make sure you aren’t throwing your backlinks away. Redirect your old URLs to keep the link authority flowing into your site.

Using uncompressed images

Introducing unnecessary subdomains

Keep your content in one place. Adding a subdomain to your site will split link authority and guarantee a migration project in the future. Always base a new website on a single platform that can do everything you need.

Time to Go Live

Eventually, it’s time to go live with your redesign.

It can be a nervewracking time for every party involved, but at the end of the day, it’s going to happen.

And while redesigning your website can have profound effects (both positive and negative) on site performance, there are ways to mitigate your risk through the process you take.

Be sure to:

Get SEO involved from the start

Find the gaps

Measure the impact

Sticking to this strategy can set yourself up to limit website problems that could devastate your organic traffic.